This is the first chance I have had to visit this board in about two weeks and I see I have a lot of catching up to do! Since there is much to say about this topic and I have too little time, I will let J. P. Holding give you a very long but very worthwhile exposition of this topic. I have highlighted some key statements and, at the end of the article, you will see that I have highlighted the invitation to read the so-called "parallels" between the two religions. That's a key section of the essay.

Did The Mithraic Mysteries Influence Christianity?

By J. P. Holding

Back in the Roman era, Mithraism was perhaps Christianity's leading competitor for the hearts and minds of others. Today Mithraism is religiously a non-factor, but it still "competes" with Christianity, in another way: It is a leading candidate for the "pagan copycat" thesis crowd as a supposed source for Christianity.

Our walking papers are laid out for us by a leading proponent of that view, Acharya S, who, in her magnum opus The Christ Conspiracy (118-120), lays out over a dozen things that Jesus supposedly has in common with Mithras and, by extension, Christianity allegedly borrowed to create the Jesus character; some of these points she now defends further in a work titled Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, which is presently only available in sample chapters on her Internet page.

Our goal in this essay is to offer an overview of Mithraic belief and at the same time analyze each of these claims in terms of the evidence. In order to lay some groundwork, however, it will be necessary to briefly explore the goings-on over the past few decades in the field of Mithraic studies. There is a certain caveat emptor that will be necessary in order to help the reader understand exactly how critics like Acharya S are misusing their sources -- and what to be on the lookout for in future comparisons.

In 1975, Mithraic studies scholar John Hinnells lamented "the practical difficulty of any one scholar mastering all the necessary fields" -- linguistics, anthropology, history (Indian, Iranian, and Roman!), archaeology, iconography, sociology -- in order to get a grip on Mithraic studies. Hinnells of course is on target with his lament; we have made the same observation here regarding Biblical studies. But Mithraism being a relatively dead religion, there are no equivalents of seminaries keeping the Mithraic studies flame alive, and no past history of "Mithraic Fathers" who produced voluminous works and meditations upon Mithra. Thus it is not surprising that for the longest time, from the end of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th, there was only one person in the world who could be regarded as any sort of authority on Mithraism -- and that was Franz Cumont.

Cumont worked with the thesis that Mithraic belief was of a continuous, fairly invariable tapestry from it's earliest history up into the Roman period. The first remaining record of a god named Mithra appears as a deity invoked in a treaty dated 1400 BC [Hinn.MS, ix]; thereafter he is one of several Indo-Iranian gods, and he is known for giving orders, assembling people, and marshalling them -- perhaps with some militaristic overtones. He also appears as one who represents the concept of fidelity -- one of many such abstractions and personifications of virtues in the ancient East, such as Bhaga the god of sharing and Aryaman the god of hospitality (think of them as divine-level Care Bears, if you will). As such, Mithra was the guy who went around dishing out punishment to those who broke treaties. He was the "guardian of the truth," "most dear to men," one "whose long arms seize the liar," who "injures no one and is everyone's friend," one who was all-seeing and all-knowing -- the sun was his "eye" on the world. Mithra was responsible also for bringing rain, vegetation and health -- for in the ancient eastern mind, it is the moral behavior of persons (especially the king) that determines the national welfare and brings a fertile climate. If the king in your land broke a treaty, you would be advised to pack up if you were a farmer, because Mithra would soon be gliding in on his chariot with a boar shape on the front (accompanied by a divine sidekick representing Victory) to kick some tail and put things right [MS.27-51]. At other times Mithra was paired with a deity named Varuna, who was his superior. Varuna was the god in charge of helping men cultivate rice (although rice "ripening in the untilled soil" was still Mithra's business), so the two of them together oversaw the agricultural aspects of men's lives.

The ancient Mithra was a great guy. Lord of the Contract, Upholder of Truth. Peaceful, benevolent, protector, provider of a nice place to live and cattle, not easily provoked. A little later in Aryan history, he did become more of a warrior (previously, he had left a lot of the tail-kicking duties to Varuna), but then switched back to pacifism. But then Zoroastrianism came along, and Mithra had some new things to do. He served as mediator between Ohrmazd and Ahriman, the good and bad gods of Zoroastrian dualism; but at the same time, he underwent something of a demotion as he became one of a group of seven lesser yazatas who served the upper-level deities [Cum.MM, 5] and was assigned some special escort duties: bringing demons to hell, and bringing souls to Paradise.

For a while after, things seem to have been quiet for Mithra. As late as the first century BC, Mithra is still associated with the sun along with Apollos and Hermes. [MS.129] So, why all this background? The problem was that Cumont was entirely wrong about very ancient (we shall say for convenience, Iranian) Mithraism being in continuity with Roman Mithraism. For you see, the Roman Mithra was best known for his act of slaying a bull; yet there is no indication that the Iranian Mithra ever made his way into a bullpen for any reason. [MS, xiii] The Roman Mithra didn't appear at all interested in contract enforcement or escorting demons into hell. (Most likely, because demons are terrible tippers.) And to make matters more complex, his followers in Iran, unlike the Roman Mithraists, did not worship in cave-like rooms (although Porphyry did think, incorrectly, that Zoroaster, the "putative founder of the cult," originated the idea of a cave as the image of the cosmos -- Beck.PO, 8), design levels of initiation, or pursue secrecy. [Ulan.OMM, 8] There was simply no solid connection between the two faiths except for the name of the central god, some terminology, and astrological lore of the sort that was widely imported into the Roman Empire from Babylon anyway [Beck.PO, 87].

Nevertheless, because Cumont was locked into the notion of continuity, he assumed (for example) that the Iranian Mithra must have done some bull-slaying somewhere along the line, and he molded the evidence to fit his thesis, straining to find an Iranian myth somewhere that involved a bull-killing (it was done not by Mithra, but by Ahriman) and supposing that there was some connection or unknown story where the Iranian Mithra killed a bull. Cumont's student Vermaseren [Ver.MSG, 17-18] also tried to find a connection, but the closest he could get was a story in which Soma, the god of life (who, as rain, was described as the semen of the sacred bull fertilizing the earth), was murdered by a consortium of gods which included Mithra -- as a very reluctant participant who had to be convinced to go along with the plan. But simply put, the Roman Mithra wasn't anything like the Iranian one. He dressed really sporty, with a Phrygian cap (typical headgear for Orientals of the day) and a flowing cape that would have made Superman green with envy. He slayed a cosmic bull and earned the worship and respect of the sun god. He had new friends, animals that gave him a helping hand (or paw, or claw) with the bull-slaying, as well as two torch-bearing twins who could have passed for his sons. If this was the Iranian Mithra, he obviously went through a midlife crisis at some point. The only thing that remained the same was that Mithra kept a loose association with the sun, which was something many gods had.

By the time of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies in the early 70s, the lack of evidence of an Iranian/Roman continuity led Mithraic scholars to suspect that Roman Mithraism was "a new creation using old Iranian names and details for an exotic coloring to give a suitably esoteric appearance to a mystery cult" [MS, xiii] -- and that Roman Mithraism was Mithraism in name only, merely a new system that used the name of a known ancient Eastern deity to attract urbane Romans who found the east and all of its accoutrements an enticing mystery. Think of it as repackaging an old religion to suit new tastes, only all you keep is the name of the deity! And what was that new religion? For years Mithraic scholars puzzled over the meaning of the bull-slaying scene; the problem was, as we have noted, that the Mithraists left behind pictures without captions. Thus in the 70s, one scholar of Mithraism lamented [MS.437]:

At present our knowledge of both general and local cult practice in respect of rites of passage, ceremonial feats and even underlying ideology is based more on conjecture than fact.

And Cumont himself observed, in the 50s [Cum.MM, 150, 152]:

The sacred books which contain the prayers recited or chanted during the [Mithraic] survives, the ritual on the initiates, and the ceremonials of the feasts, have vanished and left scarce a trace behind...[we] know the esoteric disciplines of the Mysteries only from a few indiscretions.

But before too long, Mithraic scholars noticed something (or actually, revived something first posited in 1869 that Cumont, because of his biases, dismissed -- Ulan.OMM, 15) about the bull-slaying scene: The various human, animal, and other figures comprised a star-map! The bull corresponded with Taurus; the scorpion coincided with Scorpio; the dog matched up with Canis Major, and so on. What Mithra himself corresponded to took a bit longer to decide; Spiedel first made a case for a correspondence with Orion [Spie.MO], but Ulansey has led the way with the thesis that Mithra is here to be identified with Perseus [Ulan.OMM, 26ff], and that Roman Mithraism was founded upon a "revolutionary" discovery in ancient astronomy (which was closely linked to astrology in that time) that "the entire cosmic structure was moving in a way which no one had even known before" -- a process we now call the precession of the equinoxes. In line with the Stoic belief that a divine being was the "source of every natural force," the personifying of natural forces in the form of mythical divine figures, and the origin on the cult in Tarsus, a city long under Persian domination and where Perseus was the leading god, Perseus was the perfect choice -- but this wasn't the type of thing that the cultists wanted everyone to know about, so, Ulansey theorizes, they chose the name of Mithra (a Persian god), partly to cover the identity of Perseus (who was often associated with Persia), partly because of an alliance between the Ciclian pirates who first introduced Mithraism to the Romans and a leader in Asia Minor named Mithridates ("given of Mithra"). [Ulan.OMM, 89] Quite a tangled web, this story.

What has been the point of this diversion? The point is to give the reader a warning, to be on the lookout any time a critic makes some claim about Mithraism somehow being a parallel to Christianity. Check their sources carefully. If, like Acharya S, they cite source material from the Cumont or pre-Cumont era, then chances are excellent that they are using material that is either greatly outdated, or else does not rely on sound scholarship (i.e., prior to Cumont; works by the likes of King, Lajard, and Robertson). Furthermore, if they have asserted anything at all definitive about Mithraic belief, they are probably wrong about it, and certainly basing it on the conjectures of someone who is either not a Mithraic specialist (which is what Freke and Gandy do in The Jesus Mysteries) or else is badly outdated.

Mithraic scholars, you see, do not hold a candle for the thesis that Christianity borrowed anything philosophically from Mithraism, and they do not see any evidence of such borrowing, with one major exception: "The only domain in which we can ascertain in detail the extent to which Christianity imitated Mithraism is that of art." [MS.508n] We are talking here not of apostolic Christianity, note well, but of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries, which, in an effort to prove that their faith was the superior one, embarked on an advertising campaign reminiscent of our soft drink wars. Mithra was depicted slaying the bull while riding its back; the church did a lookalike scene with Samson killing a lion. Mithra sent arrows into a rock to bring forth water; the church changed that into Moses getting water from the rock at Horeb. (Hmm, did the Jews copy that one?) Think of how popular Pokemon is these days, and then think of the church as the one doing the Digimon ripoff -- although one can't really bellow about borrowing in this case, for this happened in an age when art usually was imitative -- it was a sort of one-upsmanship designed as a competition, and the church was not the only one doing it. Furthermore, it didn't involve an exchange or theft of ideology.

As to any other parallels, in the late 60s, before the coming of age of the astrological thesis, appeal was made to the "possibility of Mithraic influence" as appearing "in many instances" -- and then again, the idea that Mithraism borrowed from Christianity was said to have "not been taken seriously enough into consideration." [Lae.MO, 86] But regarded as more likely in any case was that the two systems "could have spoken to a Roman condition, a social need, and a theological question without having known of each other's existence. As in so many other instances of philosophy and literature, parallel thoughts and social patterns can appear independently of one another as 'new' elements with the authentic consciousness of such newness."[ibid.]

But such parallels have not been so much as suggested in the wake of the astrological thesis. Today (and even by Cumont) the parallels drawn between the two faiths (by professional Mithraic scholars) are almost entirely either "universal" religious traits (i.e., both had a moral code; what religion doesn't!?) or sociological: Both spread rapidly because of the "political unity and moral anarchy of the Empire." [Cum.MM, 188-9] Both drew large numbers from the lower classes. (And of course, numerous differences are cited as well: Christianity was favored in urban areas habited by the Jewish diaspora, whereas Mithraism was indifferent to Judaism and was popular in rural areas; Mithraism appealed to slaves, troops, and functionaries vs. Christianity's broader appeal; etc.)

You may ask whether the copycatters know of any of this newer work on Mithraism by Mithraic scholars, and if so what they make of it. The answer is yes, they are becoming aware of it; but what they make of it is no more than a conspiracy. In her latest effort Acharaya says of the star-map thesis, and the lack of evidence that Mithra in his Iranian period ever slew a bull:

"The argument is in the main unconvincing and seems to be motivated by Christian backlash attempting to debunk the well-founded contention that Christianity copied Mithraism in many germane details."

At the point when scholars like Ulansey are implicitly accused, as here, of being "motivated by Christian backlash" (or as elsewhere, of being covert Christians!), the copycatters are clearly holding a counsel of despair. One would think from this confident statement that Acharya has gone to Iran and found dozens of pictures of Mithra slaying a bull, dated 500 BC, and footprints in the dust matching those of the Apostles nearby. Of course she had found no such thing. Instead we are told,

"In reality, the bull-slaying motif and ritual existed in numerous cultures prior to the Christian era, regardless of whether or not it is depicted in literature or iconography in Persia." No one doubts that the bull-slaying motif existed; the question is whether it appears as something that Mithra did in the pre-Roman era, and the other instances are completely meaningless in this context. Ulansey shows that Mithra's act was related to the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes; Acharya offers the response that:

In fact, the bull motif is a reflection of the Age of Taurus, around 4500-2300 BCE, one of the 2,150-year ages created by the precession of the equinoxes. The presumption by scholars is that the precession of the equinoxes was only "discovered" during the second century BCE by the Greek scientist Hipparchus; nevertheless, it is quite evident that the precession was well known, by the ruling elite and priestly faction, for millennia prior to its purported "discovery." That the ancients followed precessional ages is revealed abundantly in the archaeological record.

In stating this, first of all, Acharya places herself against not only Ulansey, but as Ulansey states, historians of science who agree that Hipparchus was the discoverer of the precession [Ulan.OMM, 76] -- as well as against evidence from Aristotle and others showing that such knowledge was not known prior to Hipparchus [ibid., 79]. She posits otherwise unknown and unnamed "ruling elite" and "priests" who allegedly knew about the precession; yet when it comes to details, all she has to offer is one example: "The change between the ages of Taurus and Aries is recorded even in the Bible, at Exodus 12, where Moses institutes the sacrifice of the lamb or ram instead of the bull." The problem here at face value is that even if true, this would be in the wrong order: If Exodus is symbolizing the precession, it should be ordering the sacrifice of the bull instead of the ram, not vice versa. Not that it matters, since Exodus 12, the implementation of Passover, says nothing about bulls, as "instead ofs" or for any other reason, and a lamb is still not a ram by any stretch of the imagination. Achraya is blowing bubbles here. That "Dupuis insisted upon the identification, as did Volney," is a nice personal insight into their lives, but means nothing. Bunsen's wild speculations also are without grounding; to wit: "Like Ormuzd, Mithras is represented riding on the bull, and Jehovah is described as riding on the Cherub, Kirub or bull." Mithras is nowhere shown riding a bull; he is on the bull's back, killing it; on the other end, where is it, and when, that Jehovah is said to be riding a cherub, and how, linguistically, does this get to "bull"? Solar myths in which other gods of no relation to Mithra (Apis, etc.) are depicted as or called bulls, and sacrifices of bulls in various places, are of no relevance to the issue; merely asserting that they are "essentially the same motif as Mithra slaying the bull" and quoting another of like mind does not make it so -- especially since there is no iconographic or literary evidence to prove this point. It appears that the real "bull" here is this lame (no word would do better) attempt to throw together assertions without basis and yell "Shazam!" to keep people from noticing that nothing has actually been proved.

The bottom line: Don't take what the likes of Acharya, Freke, Gandy, Wynne-Tyson, etc. say about Mithraism at face value. If so few Mithraic scholars have mastered all the needed tools, and they don't agree on these points with the copycatters, why should the copycatters be given any credence at all?

We are now ready to embark upon the practical part of our essay in which we consider in turn each of the claims made by Acharya S of alleged "parallels" between Mithraism and Christianity.

Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25th in a cave, and his birth was attended by shepherds.

This claim, which I have seen repeated in part by the Secular Web's James Still, is a mix of truth and obfuscations. Let's begin with the December 25th part by noting Glenn Miller's reply, which is more than sufficient: "...the Dec 25 issue is of no relevance to us--nowhere does the NT associate this date with Jesus' birth at all." This is something the later church did, wherever they got the idea from -- not the apostolic church, and if there was any borrowing at all, everyone did it, for Dec. 25th was "universally distinguished by sacred festivities" [Cum.MM, 196] being that it was (at the time) the winter solstice.

Next, the cave part. First of all, Mithra was not born of a virgin in a cave; he was born out of solid rock, which presumably left a cave behind -- and I suppose technically the rock he was born out of could have been classified as a virgin! Here is how one Mithraic scholar describes the scene on Mithraic depictions: Mithra "wearing his Phrygian cap, issues forth from the rocky mass. As yet only his bare torso is visible. In each hand he raises aloft a lighted torch and, as an unusual detail, red flames shoot out all around him from the petra genetrix." [MS.173] Mithra was born a grown-up, but you won't hear the copycatters mention this! (The rock-birth scene itself was a likely carryover from Perseus, who experienced a similar birth in an underground cavern; Ulan.OMM, 36.)

That leaves the shepherds, and this is one that is entirely true; although the shepherds did more than "attend" (unlike Luke's shepherds, they were witnesses to the birth; there was no angelic mediator), they also helped Mithra out of the rock, and offered him the first-fruits of their flock -- quite a feat for these guys in any event, considering that Mithra's birth took place at a time when (oops!) men had supposedly not been created on earth yet. [Cum.MM, 132] But the clincher here is that this scene, like nearly all Roman Mithraic evidence, dates at least a century after the time of the New Testament. It is too late to say that any "borrowing" was done by the Christian church -- if there was any, it was the other way around; but there probably was not. (It is fair to note also that the Iranian Mithra didn't have a "born out of rock" story...his conception was attributed, variously, to an incestuous relationship between Ahura-Mazda and his mother, or to the plain doings of an ordinary mortal woman...but there is no virgin conception/birth story to speak of. [Cum.MM, 16] Acharya says that the Indian Mitra, "was born of a female, Aditi, the 'mother of the gods,' the inviolable or virgin dawn; this is simply yet another case of her applying terminology [a "dawn" as "virgin" -- so when does the dawn start "having sex" and how?] illicitly. So likewise this word game: "It could be suggested that Mithra was born of 'Prima Materia,' or 'Primordial Matter,' which could also be considered 'First Mother,' 'Virgin Matter,' 'Virgin Mother,' etc..." -- it can be "considered" no such thing except by vivid imagination; merely playing on the psycho-linguistic similarity of sound in the English words "matter" and "mother" and trying to equare "first" with "virgin" isn't going to do the job. Research Assistant Punkish adds: ADITI (according to an astrological website) means Free unbound. Boundless heaven as compared with the finite earth. A Vedic goddess representing the primeval generator of all that emanated. The eternal space of boundless whole, the unfathomable depth signifying the veil over the unknown. (Note, not matter/mother but generator of matter!) The Rig Veda describes it as the father and mother of all gods; it is named Devamatri, mother of all gods, or Swabhavat, that which exists by itself. She is frequently implored for blessing children and cattle, for protection and forgiveness. In the Yajur Veda, Aditi is addressed as the support of the sky, the sustainer of the earth, the sovereign of this world, and the wife of Vishnu. The Vishnu Purana describes Aditi, the daughter of Daksha and the wife of Kashyapa, to be the mother of 8 Adityas (q.v.) (wife of Vishnu or Kashyapa? bit unlikely to be virginal then!!!) Then we have this website Dialogueonline.net - Magazine (comparative research on major religions) where we find: "According to the Rigveda (10/72/2) Brahmanaspati, like a craftsman, created the gods, and the gods in turn created 'Sat' from 'Asat'. The Rigveda (10/72/4-5) further says, "Daksha was born of Aditi and Aditi was born of Daksha, the gods were born of Aditi and Aditi gave birth to eight sons". This mantra suggests mainly two things - first, Aditi and Daksha took birth of each other, which proposition is never possible; second, the Creator of this universe was Aditi because she gave birth to the gods. But it ridicules more brazenly when refuting such points Rigveda (8/90/15) says: "Aditi was daughter of Adityas". In this connection, Rigveda produces more than one controversy as Rigveda tots up that Aditi was mother of Vishnu and so Rigveda (4/55/3 8/27/5) clarifies, "Aditi mothered Vishnu". But repudiating the same verse Vajasaney Samhita (20/60) and Taitirya Samhita (7/5/14) consolidates that Aditi was wife of Vishnu. The goddess, who herself is found in various controversies is considered creator of this universe. Thus, these mantras fail to shed any meaningful light on the basic issue of the birth, motherhood and even creation of the universe by Aditi.", Creator And Creation In Hindu Perspective)

Acharya now adds in her work iconographic evidence allegedly showing "the babe Mithra seated in the lap of his virgin mother, with the gift-bearing Magi genuflecting in front of them." One is constrained to ask how an icon reflects that Mithra's mother was a virgin, since it is obviously not stated. One also wants to know if any of this evidence is pre-Christian (it is not). Quoting others who merely say it is indicating a virgin birth, yet offer no more evidence, is not an argument. Finally, we are told of the "largest near-eastern Mithraeum [which] was built in western Persia at Kangavar, dedicated to 'Anahita, the Immaculate Virgin Mother of the Lord Mithras'." This is a very curious claim which is repeated around the Internet, but no source is given for it, and Acharya attributes it to a "writer" with no name or source. I believe, however, that I have found the terminal source, and it is a paper written in 1993 by a then-high school student, David Fingrut, who made this claim without any documentation whatsoever himself. His paper is now posted on the Net as a text file. That said, it is inaccurate to start with, since the building at Kanagvar is not a Mithraeum at all, but a temple to Anahita (dated 200 BC), and although I have found one source of untested value that affirms that Anahita was depicted as a virgin (in spite of being a fertility goddess!), she is regarded not at Mithra's mother, but as his consort (though it does offer other contradictory info) -- and it knows nothing of such an inscription as described; and the mere existence of the goddess Anahita before the Roman era proves nothing. Acharya appears to be throwing ringers again.

He was considered a great traveling teacher and master.
Aside from the fact that this is what we would expect from any major leadership figure, especially in a religious context ("He was a great god -- he taught us nothing!"), I have to say that this looks to be the first of several outright "ringers" in the set. I have found nowhere any indication that Mithra was a teacher, traveling or otherwise. (He probably could be called a "master," but what leading figure would not be? And a master in what sense? This is rather a vague parallel to draw!) At any rate, since there is no evidence for this one in any of the Mithraic literature, we issue our first challenge to the pagan-copycat theorists, especially Acharya S: How is it shown that Mithra was a "great traveling teacher"? What did he teach, and where, and to whom? How was he a "master" and why is this a similarity to Jesus?

He had 12 companions or disciples.
I have seen this claim repeated a number of times, almost always (see below) without any documentation. (One of our readers wrote to Acharya asking for specific evidence of this one...she did not reply, although she had readily replied to a prior message.) The Iranian Mithras, as we have seen, did have a single companion (Varuna), and the Roman Mithra had two helper/companions, tiny torch-bearing likenesses of himself, called Cautes and Cautopatres, that were perhaps meant to represent the sunrise and sunset (whereas "Big Daddy" Mithra was supposed to be noon), spring and autumn, the stars Albedaran and Antares [Beck.PO, 26] or life and death. (Freke and Gandy absurdly attempt to link these twins to the two thieves crucified with Jesus! - Frek.JM, 51 - because one went to heaven with Jesus [torch up] and one went to hell [torch down]! Why not link instead to Laurel and Hardy, because one was repentant [torch down] and the other was a bully [torch up]!) Mithra also had a number of animal companions: a snake, a dog, a lion, a scorpion -- but not 12 of them.

Now here's an irony. My one idea as to where they got this one was a picture of the bull-slaying scene carved in stone, found in Ulansey's book, that depicts the scene framed by 2 vertical rows with 6 pictures of what seem to be human figures or faces on each side. It occurred to me that some non-Mithraist perhaps saw this picture and said, "Ah ha, those 12 people must be companions or disciples! Just like Jesus!" Days later I received Freke and Gandy's book, and sure enough -- that's how they make the connection. Indeed, they go as far as saying that during the Mirthaic initiation ceremony, Mithraic disciples dressed up as the signs of the zodiac and formed a circle around the initiate. [Frek.JM, 42] Where they (or rather, their source) get this information about the methods of Mithraic initiation, one can only guess: No Mithraic scholar seems aware of it, and their source, Godwin, is a specialist in "Western esoteric teaching" -- not a Mithraist, and it shows, because although writing in 1981, well after the first Mithraic congress, Godwin was still following Cumont's line that Iranian and Roman Mithraism were the same, and thus ended up offering interpretations of the bull-slaying scene that bear no resemblance to what Mithraic scholars today see in it at all. (To be fair, though, Freke and Gandy do not give the page number where Godwin supposedly says this -- and his material on Mithraism says nothing about any initiation ceremony.) However, aside from the fact that this carving is (yet again!) significantly post-Christian (so that any borrowing would have had to be the other way), these figures have been identified by modern Mithraic scholars as representing zodiacal symbols. Indeed, the top two faces are supposed to be the sun and the moon!

Acharya in her latest now acknowledges that Mithra's dozen are the zodiac, but goes on the defense by saying, "the motif of the 12 disciples or followers in a 'last supper' is recurrent in the Pagan world, including within Mithraism" -- with the Mithraic supper compared to the Last Supper (see below). She also adds: "The Spartan King Kleomenes had held a similar last supper with twelve followers four hundreds years before Jesus. This last assertion is made by Plutarch in Parallel Lives, 'Agis and Kleomenes' 37:2-3." This is only partly true -- I was alerted to this passage by a helpful reader: "For [Cleomenes] sacrificed, and gave them large portions, and, with a garland upon his head, feasted and made merry with his friends. It is said that he began the action sooner than he designed, having understood that a servant who was privy to the plot had gone out to visit a mistress that he loved. This made him afraid of a discovery; and therefore, as soon as it was full noon, and all the keepers sleeping off their wine, he put on his coat, and opening his seam to bare his right shoulder, with his drawn sword in his hand, he issued forth, together with his friends provided in the same manner, making thirteen in all." It's a "last supper," but it isn't invested with any significance in itself (least of all, atoning significance! -- and these guys clearly had to have a "last meal" at some point!), and the twelve companions don't have any real role beyond this pericope. We'd put this own down as natural coincidence (as there are people with five, 10, or other numbers of companions as well.)

Mithra's followers were promised immortality.
On this one, Acharya is making no more than a guess, although probably a good one: As one Mithraic scholar put it, Mithraism "surely offered its initiates deliverance from some awful fate to which all other men were doomed, and a privileged passage to some ultimate state of well-being." [MS.470] Why is this a good guess? Not because Mithraism borrowed from Christianity, or Christianity borrowed from Mithraism, or anyone borrowed from anyone, but because if you don't promise your adherents something that secures their eternity, you may as well give up running a religion and go and sell timeshares in Alaska! In practical terms, however, the only hard evidence of a "salvational" ideology is a piece of graffiti found in the Santa Prisca Mithraeum (a Mithraist "church" building, if you will), dated no earlier than 200 AD, that reads, "And us, too, you saved by spilling the eternal blood." [Spie.MO, 45; Gor.IV, 114n; Verm.MSG, 172] Note that this refers to Mithra spilling the blood of the bull -- not his own -- and that (according to the modern Mithraic "astrological" interpretation) this does not mean "salvation" in a Christian sense (involving freedom from sin) but an ascent through levels of initiation into immortality.

He performed miracles.
Mithra did perform a number of actions rather typical for any deity worldwide, true or false, and in both his Iranian and Roman incarnations. But this is another one of those things where we just say, "What's the big deal?" We agree with Miller:

It must be remembered that SOME general similarities MUST apply to any religious leader. They must generally be good leaders, do noteworthy feats of goodness and/or supernatural power, establish teachings and traditions, create community rituals, and overcome some forms of evil. These are common elements of the religious life--NOT objects that require some theory of dependence...The common aspect of homo religiosus is an adequate and more plausible explanation than dependence.
Of course, our pagan-copycat theorists are welcome to try and draw more exact parallels, but as yet I have seen no cited example where Mithra turned water into wine or calmed a storm.

As the "great bull of the Sun," Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace.
This description is rather spun out into a sound-alike of Christian belief, but behind the vagueness lies a different story. Mithra did not "sacrifice himself" in the sense that he died; he was not the "great bull of the Sun", but rather, he killed the bull (attempts to somehow identify Mithra with the very bull he slayed, although popular with outdated non-Mithraists like Loisy and Bunsen, were rejected by Vermaseren, who said that "neither the temples nor the inscriptions give any definite evidence to support this view and only future finds can confirm it" [Verm.MSG, 103]; it was not for the sake of "world peace" (except, perhaps, in the sense that Cumont interpreted the bull-slaying as a creation myth [Cum.MM, 193], in which he was entirely wrong). Mithra could only be said to have "sacrificed himself" in the sense that he went out and took a risk to do a heroic deed; the rest finds no justification at all in modern Mithraic studies literature -- much less does it entail a parallel to Christ, who sacrificed himself for atonement from personal sin (not "world peace").

Punkish has added this: ...[T]he footnote [in Christ Conspiracy] reads O'Hara, which in the bibliography is Gwydion O'Hara, Sun Lore. Now if you look this guy up on Amazon.com you find his book reviews are not very positive, in fact he's the sort of person, like Barbara Walker, who makes things up. What kind of authority is he? He isn't: he's a writer on pagan practices and he was once a high priest of the Wiccan Church of Canada at a time when it was an ideal rather than a reality (!)...sounds like another nut. What's Acharya doing using this guy instead of a Mithraic scholar?

He was buried in a tomb and after three days rose again.
His resurrection was celebrated every year.
I have to classify these two as "ringers" -- I see no references anywhere in the Mithraic studies literature to Mithra being buried, or even dying, for that matter [Gordon says directly, that there is "no death of Mithras" -- Gor.IV, 96] and so of course no rising again and no "resurrection" (in a Jewish sense?!) to celebrate. Freke and Gandy [Frek.JM, 56] claim that the Mithraic initiates "enacted a similar resurrection scene", but their only reference is to a comment by Tertullian, significantly after New Testament times! Tekton Research Assistant Punkish adds: The footnote is for Tertullian's Prescription Against Heretics, chapter 40 which says, "if my memory still serves me, Mithra there, (in the kingdom of Satan, ) sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers; celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of a resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown" ...so their argument relies on Tertullian's memory, and it isn't the initiates but Mithra who does the celebrating and introduces an *image* of a resurrection?! How is that at all related to initiates acting out a scene? Wynne-Tyson [Wyn.MFC, 24; cf. Ver.MSG, 38] also refers to a church writer of the fourth century, Firmicus, who says that the Mithraists mourn the image of a dead Mithras -- still way too late, guys! -- but after reading the work of Firmicus, I find no such reference at all!) Acharya adds the assertion of Dupuis that Mithras was killed by crucifixion, but from the description, either Dupuis or Acharya are mixing up Mithra with Attis!

He was called "the Good Shepherd" and identified with both the Lamb and the Lion.
Only the third aspect has any truth to it as far as I can find from Mithraic studies sources: The lion was regarded in Roman Mithraism as Mithra's "totem" animal, just as Athena's animal was the owl and Artemis' animal was the deer [Biv.PM, 32]. Since Mithra was a sun-god, there was also an association with Leo, which was the House of the Sun in Babylonian astrology. But aside from this evidence all being post-Christian, one may ask what the big deal is. Do we expect the Christians or the Mithraists to say, "Darn, we can't use the lion, it's already taken by the other guys?" Should Exxon give up their tiger because of Frosted Flakes? But if you really want to get technical, Jesus owned the rights to the lion symbol as a member of the tribe of Judah long before Mithras even appeared in his Iranian incarnation (Gen. 49:9).

There are other associations as well: In the Roman material, one of Mithra's companions in the bull-slaying scene is a lion; the lion is sometimes Mithra's hunting and feasting companion; Mithra is sometimes associated with a lion-headed being who is sometimes identified as the evil Zoroastrian god Ahriman [MS.277]; one of the seven stages of initiation in Mithraism is the lion stage. But Mithra is only called a lion in one Mithraic tale (which is part of Armenian folklore -- where did the writers of the NT pick that up?) because as a child he killed a lion and split it in two. [MS.356, 442]

He was considered the "Way, the Truth and the Light," and the "Logos," "Redeemer," "Savior" and "Messiah." Acharya now adds in her latest work the titles creator of the world, God of gods, the mediator, mighty ruler, king of gods, lord of heaven and earth, Sun of Righteousness.

We have several titles here, and yea, though I searched through the works of Mithraic scholars, I found none of these applied to Mithra, other than the role of mediator (not, though, in the sense of a mediator between God and man because of sin, but as a mediator between Zoroaster's good and evil gods; we have seen the "sun" identification, but never that title) -- not even the new ones were ever listed by the Mithraic scholars. There is a reference to a "Logos" that was taught to the Mithraic initiates [MS.206](in the Roman evidence, which is again, significantly after the establishment of Christianity), but let it be remembered that "logos" means "word" and goes back earlier in Judaism to Philo -- Christians borrowed the idea from Philo, perhaps, or from the general background of the word, but not from Mithraism.

His sacred day was Sunday, the "Lord's Day," hundreds of years before the appearance of Christ.

Mithra had his principal festival of what was later to become Easter.
We'll consider these two together. The Iranian Mithra had a few special celebrations: a festival on October 8; another on September 12-16, and a "cattle-pairing" festival on October 12-16 [MS.59]. But as for an Easter festival, I have seen only that there was a festival at the spring equinox -- and it was one of just four, one for each season.

In terms of Sunday being a sacred day, this is correct [Cum.MM, 190-1], but it only appears in Roman Mithraism, and Acharya here is apparently assuming, like Cumont, that what held true for Roman Mithraism also held true for the Iranian version -- but there is no evidence for this. If any borrowing occurred (it probably didn't), it was the other way around.

His religion had a eucharist or "Lord's Supper," at which Mithra said, "He who shall not eat of my body nor drink of my blood so that he may be one with me and I with him, shall not be saved."

This saying is appealed to also by Freke and Gandy [Frek.JM, 49], and it took me some digging to discover it's actual origin. Godwin says that the reference is from a "Persian Mithraic text," but does not give the dating of this text, nor say where it was found, nor offer any documentation; that I found finally in Vermaseren [Verm.MSG, 103] -- the source of this saying is a medieval text; and the speaker is not Mithras, but Zarathustra! Although Vermaseren suggested that this might be the formula that Justin referred to (but did not describe at all) as being part of the Mithraic "Eucharist," there is no evidence for the saying prior to this medieval text. (Freke and Gandy, and now Acharya, try to give the rite some ancestry by claiming that it derives from an Iranian Mithraic ceremony using a psychadelic plant called Haoma, but they are clearly grasping at straws and adding speculations of meaning in order to make this rite seem similar to the Eucharist.) This piece of "evidence" is far, far too late to be useful -- except as possible proof that Mithraism borrowed from Christianity! (Christianity of course was in Persia far earlier than this medieval text; see Martin Palmer's Jesus Sutras for details.)

The closest thing that Mithraism had to a "Last Supper" was the taking of staples (bread, water, wine and meat) by the Mithraic initiates, which was perhaps a celebration of the meal that Mithra had with the sun deity after slaying the bull. However, the meal of the initiates is usually seen as no more than a general fellowship meal of the sort that was practiced by groups all over the Roman world -- from religious groups to funereal societies. [MS.348]

"His annual sacrifice is the passover of the Magi, a symbolical atonement or pledge of moral and physical regeneration."
This is rather a confused statement, for it compounds an apparent falsity (I have found no indication that Mithra's "sacrifice" was annual, rather than a once-in-the-past event); it uses terms from Judeo-Christian belief ("passover", "atonement") to describe a rite from Mithraism, without showing any similarities at all. I see this as little more than a case of illicitly applying terminology, and until more detail is provided, it can be regarded as little else.

Shmuel Golding is quoted as saying that 1 Cor. 10:4 is "identical words to those found in the Mithraic scriptures, except that the name Mithra is used instead of Christ." In her latest work Acharya attributes this comment also to Weigall.

In response to this, I need to say that if Golding has or Weigall had some Mithraic scriptures in their possession, they need to turn them over to Mithraic scholarly community at once, because they will want to know about them. Ulansey [Ulan.OMM, 3] tells us that "the teachings of the (Mithraic) cult were, as far as we know, never written down" and we "have been left with practically no literary evidence relating to the cult which would help (us) reconstruct its esoteric doctrines." So where is Golding/Weigall getting this from?

The Catholic Encyclopedia is quoted as saying that Mithraic services were conduced by "fathers" and that the "chief of the fathers, a sort of pope, who always lived at Rome, was called 'Pater Patratus.'"
Freke and Gandy add their own idea: Like Christians, Mithraic initiates called each other "brother" [Frek.JM, 67]. Both claims are true, but quite simply, so what? The use of familial terms within religious societies is a universal, and that's no surprise, because familial terms are the most useful for expressing endearment or commitment. Indeed, "kinship terminology" was used in Greco-Roman antiquity for fellows of the same religion or race, as well as of friends, allies, and even prospective guests [Keener commentary on Matthew, 370n]. (I have seen no evidence that the Pater Patratus "always lived" at Rome, but even if he did, this would be of no moment: As the leading city of the Empire, where else would this person most likely have headquarters? This means no more than mainline churches all having headquarters in New York, or all foreign countries having embassies in Washington. Beyond that, we hardly need to defend "borrowing" when what is at stake is a church organizational structure that came into being many years after apostolic times.)

Here are some additional notes from Punkish about the points in Jesus Mysteries:

Having accomplished his mission on Earth, Mithras was said to have ascended to heaven in a sun-chariot - and the footnote refers you to Cumont, p138. Cumont is actually referring to Mithra watching over the first couple (a sort of Adam and Eve) and providing divine protection to humanity during a Noahlike flood! Not related to Jesus' mission, though omission of these details implies such, especially during a resurrection discussion.

As for Mithras ascending to heaven, this is a misreading of the text. It is not Mithra, but the gods (e.g. Helios) with him who after looking after the humans, ascend, then Mithras crosses the Ocean in his chariot. The Ocean tries to engulf him and fails, and finally he joins the immortals' habitation. The term "ascension" is not uniquely applied to Mithras by Cumont.

JM's claims to Christian eschatology parallels: they list, Mithras as right hand authority, God of Light, ruler of the world, waiting for End of Time, return to earth, awake dead & pass judgment. Footnote 258 p271 says "Cumont collates a mass of Mithraic eschatological doctrines identical to Christianity." This is a terrible misreading of Cumont pp145-146...I can't find anything about "ruler of the world", protector of humanity yes, ruler no. While Mithras is said to redescend together with a bull and separates the good from the bad (as "god of truth", not God of Light - the nearest we get is his title as the celestial father who receives the faithful in a resplendent mansion!), he sacrifices the bull before the assembled humanity which are raised from the dead yes, but the doctrine is an add-on to the immortal soul view - which sounds more like transmigration, and the resurrection is for the purpose of material enjoyment. The bull's fat and consecrated wine [not its blood] is offered to the just to gain immortality - yet it is Ormazd who executes the judgment - as annihilation of the wicked together with the destruction, not eternal punishment, of Ahriman and his demons, and a rejuvenated universe is the future happiness without evil. How is this identical to Christian eschatology as Freke and Gandy have claimed?

That ends our listing, and thus our conclusion: In not one instance has Acharya made a convincing case that Christianity borrowed anything from Mithraism. The evidence is either too late, not in line with the conclusions of modern Mithraic scholars, or just plain not there. Acharya will need a lot firmer documentation before any of her claims can be taken seriously.

6. MITHRAISM AND CHRISTIANITY
Prior to the coming of the mystery cults and Christianity, personal religion hardly developed as an independent institution in the civilized lands of North Africa and Europe; it was more of a family, city-state, political, and imperial affair. The Hellenic Greeks never evolved a centralized worship system; the ritual was local; they had no priesthood and no “sacred book.” Much as the Romans, their religious institutions lacked a powerful driving agency for the preservation of higher moral and spiritual values. While it is true that the institutionalization of religion has usually detracted from its spiritual quality, it is also a fact that no religion has thus far succeeded in surviving without the aid of institutional organization of some degree, greater or lesser.
Occidental religion thus languished until the days of the Skeptics, Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics, but most important of all, until the times of the great contest between Mithraism and Paul’s new religion of Christianity. During the third century after Christ, Mithraic and Christian churches were very similar both in appearance and in the character of their ritual. A majority of such places of worship were underground, and both contained altars whose backgrounds variously depicted the sufferings of the savior who had brought salvation to a sin-cursed human race.
Always had it been the practice of Mithraic worshipers, on entering the temple, to dip their fingers in holy water. And since in some districts there were those who at one time belonged to both religions, they introduced this custom into the majority of the Christian churches in the vicinity of Rome. Both religions employed baptism and partook of the sacrament of bread and wine. The one great difference between Mithraism and Christianity, aside from the characters of Mithras and Jesus, was that the one encouraged militarism while the other was ultrapacific. Mithraism’s tolerance for other religions (except later Christianity) led to its final undoing. But the deciding factor in the struggle between the two was the admission of women into the full fellowship of the Christian faith.
In the end the nominal Christian faith dominated the Occident. Greek philosophy supplied the concepts of ethical value; Mithraism, the ritual of worship observance; and Christianity, as such, the technique for the conservation of moral and social values.

7. THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

A Creator Son did not incarnate in the likeness of mortal flesh and bestow himself upon the humanity of Earth to reconcile an angry God but rather to win all mankind to the recognition of the Father’s love and to the realization of their sonship with God. After all, even the great advocate of the atonement doctrine realized something of this truth, for he declared that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” It is not the province of this paper to deal with the origin and dissemination of the Christian religion. Suffice it to say that it is built around the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the humanly incarnate Christ Son of Nebadon, known to Earth as the Christ, the anointed one. Christianity was spread throughout the Levant and Occident by the followers of this Galilean, and their missionary zeal equaled that of their illustrious predecessors, the Sethites and Salemites, as well as that of their earnest Asiatic contemporaries, the Buddhist teachers.
The Christian religion, as a Earthn system of belief, arose through the compounding of the following teachings, influences, beliefs, cults, and personal individual attitudes:
1. The Melchizedek teachings, which are a basic factor in all the religions of Occident and Orient that have arisen in the last four thousand years.
2. The Hebraic system of morality, ethics, theology, and belief in both Providence and the supreme Yahweh.
3. The Zoroastrian conception of the struggle between cosmic good and evil, which had already left its imprint on both Judaism and Mithraism. Through prolonged contact attendant upon the struggles between Mithraism and Christianity, the doctrines of the Iranian prophet became a potent factor in determining the theologic and philosophic cast and structure of the dogmas, tenets, and cosmology of the Hellenized and Latinized versions of the teachings of Jesus.
4. The mystery cults, especially Mithraism but also the worship of the Great Mother in the Phrygian cult. Even the legends of the birth of Jesus on Earth became tainted with the Roman version of the miraculous birth of the Iranian savior-hero, Mithras, whose advent on earth was supposed to have been witnessed by only a handful of gift-bearing shepherds who had been informed of this impending event by angels.
5. The historic fact of the human life of Joshua ben Joseph, the reality of Jesus of Nazareth as the glorified Christ, the Son of God.
6. The personal viewpoint of Paul of Tarsus. And it should be recorded that Mithraism was the dominant religion of Tarsus during his adolescence. Paul little dreamed that his well-intentioned letters to his converts would someday be regarded by still later Christians as the “word of God.” Such well-meaning teachers must not be held accountable for the use made of their writings by later-day successors.
7. The philosophic thought of the Hellenistic peoples, from Alexandria and Antioch through Greece to Syracuse and Rome. The philosophy of the Greeks was more in harmony with Paul’s version of Christianity than with any other current religious system and became an important factor in the success of Christianity in the Occident. Greek philosophy, coupled with Paul’s theology, still forms the basis of European ethics.
As the original teachings of Jesus penetrated the Occident, they became Occidentalized, and as they became Occidentalized, they began to lose their potentially universal appeal to all races and kinds of men. Christianity, today, has become a religion well adapted to the social, economic, and political mores of the white races. It has long since ceased to be the religion of Jesus, although it still valiantly portrays a beautiful religion about Jesus to such individuals as sincerely seek to follow in the way of its teaching. It has glorified Jesus as the Christ, the Messianic anointed one from God, but has largely forgotten the Master’s personal gospel: the Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of all men. And this is the long story of the teachings of Machiventa Melchizedek on Earth. It is nearly four thousand years since this emergency Son of Nebadon bestowed himself on Earth, and in that time the teachings of the “priest of El Elyon, the Most High God,” have penetrated to all races and peoples. And Machiventa was successful in achieving the purpose of his unusual bestowal; when Christ made ready to appear on Earth, the God concept was existent in the hearts of men and women, the same God concept that still flames anew in the living spiritual experience of the manifold children of the Universal Father as they live their intriguing temporal lives on the whirling planets of space.

Urantia Book Paper 98 section 6 & 7

mithras Author: Overcomer Posted: 05/13/2005 09:30 AM

I hope you're not seriously presenting The Urantia Book as a valid source of information, BroDave. The Urantia Foundation is a new age cult that suggests that Jesus used to be a guy named Michael of Nabadon before he came to earth and that extraterrestial beings are guiding The Urantia Foundation in re-writing the Bible and changing the identity of Jesus Christ.

In other words, their goal is to attack Christianity and God's Word. Whether they do that by valid means or not, they don't care. They have NO credibility among legitimate scholars. The Bible as a document has been validated by reputable scholars and information scientists. It has a history that can be verified while that of the Urantia can't. It was published in 1955 so you'd think that it would be easy to track its history, given how recent it is.

Here's the scoop on the Urantia Book from the Urantia Foundation itself:

1. What is it? -- It is a 2,097 page volume comprising 196 distinct papers that describe God, the created universe, the various orders of personalities that inhabit and administer it, the history of our own world (called "Urantia") and the problems that beset it, and the life, teachings, and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. The Urantia Book was published in 1955 by the Urantia Foundation (address given below). Much of it was written by 1935.

2. Who wrote it? -- The authors of the individual papers are identified as various orders of celestial beings. The papers came to be written down by means of a process that has not been clearly described. The human being responsible for facilitating this process was Dr. William S. Sadler (1875-1969), a practicing psychiatrist, lecturer in comparative religion, and author of numerous books. The self-identified authors of the Urantia Book describe themselves as being subject to a mandate requiring them to make use of extant human sources whenever possible, resorting to "pure revelation" only when these sources were clearly inadequate. Consequently, the Urantia Book's authors indirectly include those humans whose ideas were adapted for inclusion in the papers.

3. Revelation? -- The Urantia Book describes itself as the Fifth Epochal Revelation. To understand what this means you must first understand the distinction that it makes between "autorevelation" and "epochal revelation." According to the Urantia Book each of us is indwelt by a fragment of the living God, called a "Thought Adjuster." The Adjuster attempts to steer us toward spiritual truth and, to the extent that it is successful, we have autorevelation. Sometimes, however, truth is revealed by the agency of other beings. Rarely, it is revealed on a grand scale; such revelations are called "epochal" and the Urantia Book if the fifth such. The preceding four are also described in it.

I can't help but make a connection with these people to Mormons. Joseph Smith also brought forth new books and altered the meaning of what the Bible said and, like the Urantia Foundation, changed the identity of Jesus Christ, making him Lucifer's brother. Jehovah Witnesses have also re-written the Bible to make it say what they want it to say.

There's a reason why John states in the Book of Revelation, written at the end of the first century, why we should NOT accept any additions or deletions from God's Word. It was in anticipation of people like Smith and groups like the Urantia Foundation.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls proved how accurately the Bible has been recorded and preserved down through the years. You can't possibly take the Urantia Foundation seriously. Reputable scholars certainly don't.

An interesting book on the subject is Martin Gardner's Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery.

Author: sin_is_fun Posted: 05/16/2005 03:06 PM

Interesting views,but I guess acharya is coming up with his another book where he will answer these rebuttals.

Author: hamilrob Posted: 06/08/2005 03:47 AM

I believe Christianity developed out of all the pagan mystery religions and Gnostic Christianity was a critical element of it's development. Unfortunately, the Gnostics were persecuted as heretics and their books destroyed, except for the ones discovered at Nag Hammadi. They reveal a rich, Spiritual interpretation of Jesus Christ which opposed the literalism that eventually took hold in the established church.

An interesting question is, "Was Paul a Gnostic Christian?" If so, that could explain his glaring lack of references to the historical Jesus critical aspects of his teachings.

Author: Cathar1950 Posted: 09/15/2005 01:44 PM

Overcomer wrote:

Quote:

There's a reason why John states in the Book of Revelation, written at the end of the first century, why we should NOT accept any additions or deletions from God's Word.

The problem I have with this is The Book of Revelation does not say we should Not accept any addition or deletions from God's Word.
It talks about adding or substraction the blessings and curses. I do not equate the Christian Bible with God's Word, Or Jesus.
Paul influenced the writer of John not the other way around. I doubt that anything written in John was said by Jesus it is way to Pauline and different then the earlier gospels. The Blood and body part was a Paul invention.
We don't know where he got it. He said Jesus told him. he never met Jesus except in Visions. The gospel writers when they were writing quoted Paul and placed it in The mouth of Jesus. The Jews would have been apauled(pun intended) at the idea.